Today operators of networks using a packet-oriented protocol, e.g., the Internet network, UMTS network or the ATM network typically provide their customers with the same level of service performance. Service differentiation or scaling usually occurs in the field of pricing (individual versus business rates) or the connectivity type (dial-up access versus leased line, etc.).
However, during recent years the increased usage of networks using a packet-oriented protocol has resulted in scarcity of network capacity. At the same time new applications have emerged which demand much improved and guaranteed service quality.
As a result service providers find it necessary to offer the customers alternative levels of service and also to meet new customer expectations. Achieving this goal will allow service providers to improve their revenues through premium pricing and competitive differentiation of service offerings which in turn can support the necessary expansion of existing networks.
Today most of the existing applications designed for networks using a packet-oriented protocol are adapted to the available service quality in the network using a packet-oriented protocol. In this context, a service is to be understood as the overall treatment of a defined set or subset of a customer's traffic either in a network or sub-network or end-to-end.
E.g., for the service provided through the Internet being classified as “best effort” service no guarantees at all are given with respect to throughput, delay, and further requirements. However, specific applications such as IP-telephony or interactive games only provide a quality acceptable to the user when the underlying network using a packet-oriented protocol provides a certain service quality being better than “best effort”.
Therefore, for the support of scalable service quality in the network using a packet-oriented protocol there exist different approaches, e.g., the so-called integrated services concept and the so-called differentiated services concept.
The integrated service approach is based on the reservation of resources for dedicated data streams. These resources are assigned to applications for a certain time. For the use of resources the requirements regarding bandwidth etc. must be signalled end-to-end.
Further, as alternative to the integrated services approach there has been proposed the differentiated service approach that relies on the different treatment of a plurality of traffic classes.
All packet transmissions lying in a single class are handled in an aggregated manner by the network using a packet-oriented protocol. Here, the intention is to avoid the holding and administration of data records for the single connections so as to reduce the load on the network nodes. In other words, a network does not guarantee the service quality for a specific data stream but for a class of data streams.
One problem with respect to the available art is that the concepts outlined above for a network using a packet-oriented protocol currently may not be applied in the case that the network using a packet-oriented protocol is interfaced to a network using a circuit-oriented protocol. In other words, it is not possible to have user determined service differentiation in case of an access from a network using a circuit-oriented protocol to a network using a packet-oriented protocol and vice versa, e.g., for a VoIP gateway or an internet dial-up access starting from a circuit-switched environment.
To the contrary, a network using a circuit-oriented protocol, e.g., PLMN, ISDN, PSTN does not provide the possibility to indicate the needed/required/preferred service differentiation settings to, e.g., an access server, a router or a gate keeper (according to the ITU H.323 standard). Thus, it is not possible to define the service requirements via the network using a circuit-oriented protocol for further use in the network using a packet-oriented protocol or vice versa.
Yet another problem with respect to the available art is that there exist no mechanisms to control priorization and preferred handling in case of an access from the network using a circuit-oriented protocol to the network using a packet-oriented protocol or vice versa.
One such application scenario would, e.g., be the initialization of voice over IP calls originating from a mobile communication network into the network using a packet-oriented protocol. Preferably, certain calls such as emergency calls should have a higher priority and be handled in a preferred manner. Nevertheless, currently it is not possible to transfer this kind of information from the network using a circuit-oriented protocol to a network using a packet oriented protocol or vice versa.